Convergence XII

June 10 - 17, 1999

[Art Reviews]

A happening happening

Convergence XII returns to the capital city

by Bill Rodriguez

"Traffic In Memory"

Some of the sights are going to be familiar -- and yet not. A briefcase-toting man wearing a hat and suit will be rushing through the Weybosset and Westminster intersection by the Hospital Trust Building, where so many hurry every day. But he will be close to 10 feet tall. A small flock of birds will be whooshing through the tall corridors between the office buildings. But they too will be made of cloth and Styrofoam and wood.
"Traffic In Memory" is the name of the spectacle that will enliven the staid stretch of downtown on Saturday, June 12 at 9 and 10 p.m. It is a tiny part of the Convergence XII International Festival of the Arts, the ever-elaborate art and performance celebration that will stretch over 10 days and nights (June 11-20). The work of more than 50 sculptors will be part of it, as well as numerous musicians and dancers, plus the city's signature WaterFire Providence, scores of bonfires on the rivers that run through the city.
The "Traffic In Memory" performance will be 25 minutes of frivolity, both surreal and edifying. A huge sphere composed of garbage can lids will roll and clatter down the street, dancer Heather Ahern on top. Sporting astronomical and cartographical signs, a skinny A-frame house, which thinks it is an transoceanic schooner and contains a 13th-century astronomer, will be wheeled in. On two sides of it, spectators will see a shadow puppet play depicting the history of Providence and America, both historical and imagined.
The imagineers behind all this are Vanessa Gilbert and Jeremy Woodward, both 28, well-known on the local theater scene. She has been associate artistic director of Perishable Theatre since 1996. He is Perishable's resident designer and technical director and has done sets for national fire prevention TV spots (prompting Julia Child to describe one as "very jolly"). Together they present the bimonthly late night "Blood From a Turnip" puppet salon at Perishable. And they founded El Studio La Mano, a sprawling South Providence design space where puppeteers Kitty Lovell, Dennis Hlynsky and Monica Shinn also create and fabricate.
For the Convergence XII performance, a total of 22 puppeteers have been recruited from the Providence-Boston area, including Heather Henson, daughter of the late Muppets creator. In addition, there will be a small band comprised of Steve Jobs, Rachel Maloney, Ellen Santaniello, and Chris Turner.
When they were commissioned to do the Convergence piece, the first thing they knew was that they couldn't do a straight beginning-middle-end story.
"It's an outdoor performance, so people will becoming and going on their own schedules," Woodward said. "So if you're really trying to present something that depends on a throughline to understand it, you're going to leave out a lot of people because they're late. Or you're going to demand a form of attention that I'm not sure is possible at that scale and those surroundings."
A chicken wire construction before him on a workbench had the shape of a large hat, such as a huge hurrying suited puppet might wear. Jeremy was attaching cloth to the brim.
Vanessa pulled over a stool and spoke about how they attempt to transform ordinary things into things that might prompt a raised eyebrow or two. "What we're doing is re-creating familiar objects through somewhat foreign materials. And it takes the audience member to recognize it as something they know from their everyday lives.
"So what they're doing is making this funny substitution, and I think art does that all the time," she continued. "And that is the coolest part of puppetry, performance, any kind of theater. To look at something abstract and start working to figure it out."
Woodward added that puppets nevertheless remain their inert selves, that any transformation remains entirely within our minds. "I think that it's the greatest form of magic that we have available to us today, because it doesn't really betrayed itself. It's always just a piece of wood, it's always dead, always just a little carved object. And at the same time you can't help but have your heart just leap out to this thing when it falls down the stairs or something like that.
"When I've seen really great puppetry, I've had this really weird feeling that I remember having as a kid, when the world subtly becomes very different than it was, in a very scary and invisible way."
It's the kind of sorcery that shamans rely on: that straw doll he holds can kill or cure if a person is convinced he's breathed life into it.
"I made a sock puppet for Rose Weaver when I was three years old," Gilbert declared, referring to the Trinity Rep actor and singer. "I shelved it for a long, long time, made a lot of dolls, invested my mother's Barbie dolls with great amazing lives but didn't really manipulate them that much. I was much more interested in stories."
When she started directing theater in college, at New School University in New York City, she noticed that all her productions used the theatrical device of animating objects. In Measure for Measure, for example, she had a sheet behind which some brothel hijinks took place, and when the madam wanted to hide the activity she simply crumpled up the cloth and hid it from the police in her pocket.
Vanessa and Jeremy first worked together in 1996, on in The Handless Maiden, a fairy tale adaptation for grown-ups that she staged at Perishable. He has designed some especially imaginative sets there, such as a surreally precise corporate office milieu in Aisha Rahman's Only In America, one wall gilded, another covered with trophy animals.
"The slippery slope to where I am now started when I realized that you could find architecture in masks," said Woodward, a RISD grad with a degree in architecture. "I was working in Big Nazo at the time, and I found a lot of similarities in the way we construct the relationships that we use to make the world go. I found the buildings were as active participants in that sort of relationship as masks were in theatrical performances.
"In buildings they're so much theatricality that goes on: where people place themselves in buildings -- you have to go up 25 flights of stairs, and down the long hall to find them in this giant, cavernous space. It's all performance, it's just overlooked."
"Historically," Gilbert added, with a wry smile, "kings were very good set-designers-slash-performers."
Well, the Sun King may have been a gaudier spectacle sitting high on his glinting throne at Versailles. But Jeremy Woodward and Vanessa Gilbert have learned plenty from him and such inspirations. So "Traffic In Memory" is likely to be delightful indeed.